


Juniper Days and the Yellow Substarport

by schumie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Comedy, Drugs, Multi, Other, Sci-Fi, Space Drugs, alien princes with middriff shirts, lots of stupid luck, nonbinary aliens, robotic sheep, thieves that are horrible at stealing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-08-14 16:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8020546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schumie/pseuds/schumie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While attempting to steal a famous diamond, Juniper Days accidentally steals the prince of Lupine III. Only, he's not exactly a prince and he doesn't seem to particularly mind having been kidnapped. Unfortunately, his body guards and the entirety of Lupine III think differently. Now the two have to avoid a posse of ogres, get the diamond to the commissioner, and uncover a dirty, psychedelic plot without dying in deep space. This is all made better by the fact that, starting with her name, Juniper Days has never had a day of good luck in her entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unfortunately-Named Girl is Unfortunate

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I started a long time ago as a way to have fun. If it seems like a cheap rip-off of Douglas Adams, that's because it is.

In the beginning, there was a lot of Nothing. And it would have done well to stay that way. But no, Nothing had to go and have a fling with a Nothing that was passing through and then, of course, Something was born. Light. And light created Dark, etc., etc., creating a whole chain of irresponsibility. As is usually the case whenever a Something is made from two Nothings, that innocent little Something is usually neglected and has to work extra hard and get by on its own so that the extended family won’t feel guilty for not stepping in. Whether or not this little Universe grew and developed successfully or not is debatable, but in the beginning it was doing okay, and had only the best intentions. Fast forward a few years.

 

 

I.

Juniper Days’ life was doomed the day she was born, or, more specifically, the hour in which her parents had decided it would be a good idea to name a child Juniper Days. Juniper wished, not for the first time, that she could slap them both upside their heads.

 

She was fairly sure that, wherever her parents were, they both would probably be too blazed on moonsheen or salamander to feel her magnificent slap, but that didn't stop her from envisioning it. The problem with this particular dream was that it required that her parents not only be alive (which was just as impossible as it was possible), but be alive and knowing who was slapping them.

 

Juniper Days’ parents did not know who she was, if they were alive. They probably didn’t know they’d cursed their daughter in a moment of drug-induced nomenclature. They might not remember that they had a daughter. Which was a bit of a shame, because their very real daughter was descending down the western wall of an alter-tower, the newest and brightest starscraper in OZ (short for the Oh!-Zone—home is no place like it!).

 

Like the name implied, alter-towers had the unique ability to alter into different shapes in order to accommodate anything from a human diplomat to a tankership-sized Kravokiian ambassador in all his black, gooey importance. The alter-tower that Juniper was attempting to repel down was in a state of transition from three medium-sized hotel wings to one giant red and orange mass that resembled something like a circus tent. Unfortunately for Juniper, it was transitioning with her dangling outside a fifteenth floor window, which was nine windows away from becoming part of a huge metal cage that was probably supposed to hold a griffin or a librarian for the side show.

 

Juniper was good at improvising. However, she had already had to improvise twice that day and she was feeling very inflexible. That may have been because she had gotten herself tangled in the rope she was using to scale the alter-tower. It’s hard to be flexible when you’re tangled in rope unless you’re a pleasure sprite from LunaLatex.

 

It hadn’t been Juniper’s fault. There wasn’t a scheduled transition in the tower’s calendar. A surprise guest was coming then. Someone important. Juniper hadn’t accounted for the possibility that her rope would be twisted and turned as the three towers fitted and fretted to change their steel outsides to thick canvas and the foundation bars to tent poles. The resulting change had not only entangled her in her rope, but also sent the rope is a slow swing against a sharp edge of imitation wood that was currently converting into a popcorn stand. Juniper’s rope was growing thinner with each swing she made. She racked her brain, willing it to kick in and do something useful. He mind tore through pieces of physics and mathematical formulas and literature that featured anything related to repelling down tall buildings and not dying. Her not-unimpressive brain sectioned off, allocating different tasks to different parts and sloshing them together to try to find a viable solution to the current predicament. Her intelligence and resourcefulness was often considered “not that bad” for a human that wasn’t engineered or programmed and was probably formed by parents that were on shrooms.

 

“Grrrghhh,” the alter-tower altered at her.

 

Juniper’s sizable brain made some instantaneous calculations and came up with a reasonable plan for survival that involved swinging at the right angle to one corner, taking hold, placing feet on two separate window ledges, and finagling her way in through one of the two windows before they were altered into mechanical elephants or something. The physics of reaching the corner computed correctly. It was doable if she swung just right. One...two...

Her rope snapped with a relieved THWIP and sent her plummeting down, with the help of the altered building façade, now only ten full stories from the ground.

“Oh,” thought Juniper’s intelligent brain.

 

 

II.

 

Amaury DeLion was the most expert of hotel managers. He had graduated top in his Interworld Hospitality Management program, was recognized immediately for his talents at his first place of work, rocketed to the very top there, then was offered a higher top to rocket to at Cabal Companies’s finest alter-tower hotel, the Straight of Cab-alter Suites. Amaury was not, however it may seem, French. This said, he was fairly handsome, trim, indulged in a glass or two of wine each night, and had a thin mustache. Actually, he probably was French. If France still existed. Either way, he was very good at his job.

 

Currently this job was overseeing the altering of Cab-alter Suites to a big bigtop. He was supposed to have been on vacation (a pleasure cruise to Luna Latex, but the administration didn’t need to know) but Amaury had much pride in his job and when he heard that a VIP was coming to his alter-tower, he couldn’t very well be off, getting lathered up by a six-armed, three-balled pleasure sprite, could he? Amaury strode around, checking off tasks and items on a check list that only he could decipher. All seven pages held tasks that must be complete before or during the Cab-alter Suites transition into its new form for the night. He counted the diminishing windows and eyed the elevators as they were slowly sucked towards the back of the structure. Elevators were always a nuisance. They were one feature that was difficult to alter into anything else and alter back fully. For some reason the basic mechanics didn’t allow for it. So the elevators had to stay in the circus tent. Amaury had accounted for this and made sure that the lobby bathroom mirrors, engraved with a colorful Pegasus suited for a merry-go-round, would create a suitable screen for the metal boxes and parts of their elevator shafts. The elevator cables would be worked into the trapeze rigging. He watched the numbers on the elevators change rapidly, formulas appearing in place of floor numbers as they descended down and backwards into the main tent.

 

A fury Turdak, Hank, head of the motorizations for the hotel, approached Amaury with his own checklist which was not nearly as long as Amaury’s. Amaury noted this verbally. Hank explained that was merely because Amaury had more responsibilities as he was overseeing all of the process and Hank was just in charge of the actual movement programming. Hank did not like Amaury’s slimness or his expensive glasses of wine. But putting all of that aside, they were running low on Juniper Juice. For some reason, the meter was reading lower than predicted. There would be enough to finish the transforming but only if there were no real problems. This news did not settle well with Amaury, who’s mustache seemed to curl up on its own.

 

A circus had never been part of the Cabal-ter Suites’ repertoire before so there were bound to be problems and Amaury had planned to find each and every one and address them on a prioritized basis. He had even made a list of the most likely disturbances, arranging them from “minor hiccup” to “job-destroying quandary”. But no matter, things had been running perfectly so far. One of the smoothest transformings Amaury had ever overseen. Tents were simple structures. The trick would be changing it into a casino tomorrow, complete with vault and valets. Until then, Amaury allowed himself to feel smug as he watched a Jacuzzi tub turn into dunking booth and looked over his possible problems list, crossing out several of the ones towards the middle. Most of the major difficulties and moderate setbacks had been avoided.

His list had not, however, accounted for a minor hiccup shooting through an altering window and landing, by some sheer luck and gross inconvenience for him, in just the way necessary to hit the elevator cables and slow down for a split second before sliding floppily through them like a lone noodle through a colander.

Amaury DeLeon looked down and created a new checklist box, scribbling in “suicidal human female” in the minor hiccup category while the minor hiccup plummeted toward her death from sixty feet above him.

 

 

III.

 

As she fell and thought “oh,” Juniper had another thought—namely that thinking “oh” was a lame last thought. So she thought about herself. She thought about how she’d come to be free falling through the roof of a transforming building then decided these were lame thoughts and looked for something more deserving of the last nanoseconds of her life.

 

The result was that she couldn’t really think of anything to think of while her hair whipped painfully behind her and her cheek flesh flapped back from her mouth. At some point when the cheek flapping was getting rather unbearable, Juniper tried to switch to memories of holographic flower fields with Juniper Juice that made the flowers smell real but she’d never been in a holographic flower field and she wouldn’t know the smell of a rose if it kicked her in the spleen. It was hard to remember something that she’d never actually experienced so she focused instead on how horrible her obituary would be. People she didn’t know would see her name on a screen somewhere in scrolling font size four, and their only thought would be Juniper Days? Seriously? Glad the poor girl’s out of that misery.

 

Juniper did not necessarily despise her name or even really hate it with flaming aversion. It was a fairly uncommon name, and being named after a plant was initially fairly pleasant. At least she wasn’t Daisy Summers or Strawberry Fields. In fact, she wouldn’t mind her name at all if not for The Fusion.

 

 

IV.

 

At some point, technology had advanced enough for humans to really travel through space. Like, meet-aliens type of travel. Humans could now drink coffee with horses from Neevuriangnthz Five and fight disastrously bloody civil suits with Larkians who were all, by profession, lawyers. The modern advances were astounding and had come at a beneficial time, considering Earth was more or less a gross mess by then. Oddly enough, however, while leaving Earth, the special space shuttles and rockets required had blown very deep holes into the Earth’s crust, exposing ancient ruins and perfectly preserved libraries huddling in protected spheres on giant lakes of magma and other such hot stuff near the planet core. Years later some of the small children that saw the unearthing of these ruins as they took off from their launch pads in Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Newark decided to come back and explore as grown scientists and archaeologists. Well, except for the people from Newark. They were just there for the “cool shit”. Upon excavation, what they found was some pretty cool shit.

 

Unfortunately, most of them didn’t quite understand it all as it turned out what they were investigating wasn’t actually ancient technological artifacts, but ancient magic artifacts, and the thing that kept the artifacts from burning up was not any form of technology humans or aliens had discovered so far, but really old magic no one knew anymore, and scientists and archaeologists usually aren’t too good with magic. Thirty-seven of the Thirty-seven people that went on the expedition burned to a crisp within the first week on the site. Scientifically-speaking, that is.

 

A few years later, a portion of two of the staff reappeared on their home planet. They had somehow figured out enough of the stuff to hightail it the hell out of there with their arms full of ancient writings. They both still haunted the Universal Intelligence Library, as something akin to ghosts. They weren’t really alive and were able to pass through walls, so whatever the hell they were, people called them ghosts. The two were fairly advanced ghosts and spent their time shushing kids and pointing out mistakes in college students’ formulas for coordinate space travel. No one liked them much, but cursing them out was paramount to calling Einstein or Mother Teresa old coots. Especially since they’d gone through the trouble of explaining everything they’d brought back with them to the people who would listen. They had a habit of doing this while pounding fists on the library’s imitation juniper wood tables. Therefor the magical arts were known as Juniper Laws, and from them sprang The Fusion--an era of industrial enlightenment and magic, myth and molecules, shape-bending starscrapers and ouji board séances. All and all it was a clusterfuck.

 

Thus an era of unimaginable marriage between magic and science began, which drove some people to make as much possible (money) out of it, advance it, study its innate properties, or just get really confused and light up a joint.

 

It was a time of spectacular new progress after a time of really good progress, and people either went with it or went insane. As is always the way, new chemical advances lead to new drugs, and with magical advances, well, one can imagine. People weren’t only stoned on moonsheen (made out of finely ground dust from certain silvery-white rocks with a bit of blood sacrifice) but were sniffing mugwart glue and summoning creatures to concoct pots of clear liquid that did some serious work on brain cells. They were summoning slaves to make dope. Obviously demons from other realms. New worker’s rights laws didn’t seem to do much in the face of evil orgies and contracts signed with blood. Magic and alien materials were being used to fund a universal drug empire. Drugs made from adaptations of the Juniper Laws. And they were crazy shit. Users went into day or sometimes month-long dazes and trances, often dying of starvation in the process. These Dazers reported that starving had never felt so “down-right bitchin’”.

 

Thus Juniper Days’ name. A clever joke. She had every right to hate it. Instead she chose to vaguely loathe it on special occasions. This was one of them.

 

 

V.

 

Amaury DeLeon was a busy man. Using the term loosely. He had a multi-page checklist, and though he was by all means anal and retentive and nitpicky, he had exactly one hour and forty-two minutes left to create an entire circus and the acrobats were late. He would have to consolidate. He would ignore all of the small hiccup boxes on his lists. He swiftly relocated the falling female human item onto his “shit to deal with later” list as she did not seem to be causing any immediate problems. He then strode off to check on the sphinx trainer. Because of this, he was not present to see Juniper Days slide ungracefully from between several elevator cables only to fall a bit more and hit some other wires.

 

By this point Juniper was very tired of ropes, cables, wires, string, knitting yarn, and any other sort of long object capable of suspending a person in the air. Juniper Days was tired in general. It had been three full days since she slept and it was starting to impact her in basically every physical and mental way possible. Her eyes looked more like they’d been knocked out and left empty black sockets behind them. He clothes were wrinkled, torn, and smelled a little like over-boiled parsnips. Her jacket bulged in weird lumps. He brain was ready to call it quits, so thinking took extra effort and made her tilt her head a little to shift around the insides. This just made her more tired and wrinkled her clothes more.

 

Juniper was thoroughly stuck. So she decided to relax. There was nothing else to do for it anyway. She would have to wait until they transformed the building again (hopefully in the morning) and take the chance to worm her way out of loosening cables. Or die twisted to death in them painfully. Either way she wasn’t going anywhere for now.

 

Juniper looked on, a bit interested, as the circus tent was polished around her. Not fifteen minutes later people began to file in from outside, some families with cute little eight-armed children, some businessmen looking for a way to relax and sneak booze after work, even a few fairies and C-A.I. androids. Amidst the hubbub, though, a group of all similarly-dressed and towering ogres were ushered in to the front seats, where they huddled, looking around them with scanning and apprehensive eyes. A group of foreign ambassadors or councilogres then. They seemed very uncomfortable and remained standing until the show began and hisses from the people behind them sat them down, at which time the ring master came out to give his schpeel and something very bad happened to Juniper Days.

 

Hanging there, tangled in rope and elevator cable, staring at a sawdust floor very far below her, Juniper Days got an itch. Not just any itch. Along with the synthetic circus animals, flies had come apparently. Trojan Green Flies, to be exact. Or one, at least. Trojan flies were disgusting. Picture a horse fly. Now think of a Trojan Fly. Not only were they bigger than horse flies, but they carried sacks of eggs in their stomachs, ready to spew them on any unsuspecting member of a species. The eggs hatched within an hour at which time the hundreds of tiny Trojan Flies would consume the flesh of whatever they had been puked onto. Juniper heard a familiar buzz pass her ear and, seconds later, felt the tiny tingle of something small crawling on her legs and making her itch to no end.

 

Juniper freaked. Such a magnificent flailing of arms and legs would have made a three-footed Aqauarianisan Water Nymph Olympic synchronized swimming team proud. She thrashed so artfully and so destructively that she managed to quarter turn her way out of the knot she was in. At which point in time she fell several feet from the elevator cables, scrambled to reach for whatever she could on the way down, ended up with the trapeze bar, and found herself swinging in mid air for the second time that day.

 

Hanging from the bar, Juniper watched as an attractive woman came out with a long whip. Behind her were released three griffins, letting out loud squawks more akin to ferocious growls. She cracked her whip a few times and signaled the beasts to perform various menial tricks. The crowd applauded happily and the woman pointed out someone from the audience up front to approach as a volunteer. Juniper was aware of a shift in the group of black-clothed ogres as her palms began to sweat.

 

A young man approached the whip-wielding woman, who did a small show for him by cracking it every which way, then making the audience gasp as she flicked a switch on it and bolts of blue electricity buzzed down it. Juniper’s fingers began to slip, one by one, from her trapeze bar. The young man was shown how to wield the whip and the griffins took turns laying down, cawing, and spreading their great white wings to stand on their hind legs. The young man was working on the second griffin when Juniper’s last fingers slipped from the tapeeze bar and she fell, hopefully for the last time in her life, towards the ring below. Juniper was so sick of falling by then that she honestly was a little glad to be dying. It would mean no more rope or buildings or alter-towers ever again. Then Juniper landed with a FWOOFKUNK on something both hard and soft.

 

There was a loud cry that she would identify five seconds later as having come from one of the poor griffins, who, it turned out, was not actually a griffin at all, but a funny-looking Saturn troll the size of a car, covered in the thickest, fluffiest hair imaginable and a hologram projection that was flickering between troll and griffin. The troll was clutching at his extremely furry arm which he held straight out and bent at a comical angle. Juniper had landed on an alien cave troll...griffin...thing.

 

The crowd was in an uproar at the hologram projector, shouting accusations of cheat and returned ticket fares, but it fell silent when Juniper peeled herself from the floor, spilling the Cabal Diamond from her jacket in the process.

 

Perhaps it is now time for an explanation:

 

The Cabal diamond was from a diamond mine on a certain star in Orion’s belt that no one had ever been able to find except for the people that found it. The Cabal diamond was very large and very valuable to humans who, despite the ability to create diamonds at the press of a button, still couldn’t get over just how much more shiny natural diamonds were. Juniper had not been repelling down the western side of the Cab-alter Suites tower for fun. Contrary to any assumptions made up to this point, she was neither reckless nor a thrill-seeker.

 

Juniper was a thief.

 

A very unlucky one,  but she usually managed to get things stolen. Someone had wanted the Cabal Diamond, which was always kept at the thirty-fifth floor of the Cab-alter Suites tower when it was in its original hotel form. Juniper had gotten the diamond and everything had been going peachy up until the point when she was making her escape and several floors of hotel had begun altering. Which brings us to the current state of affairs.

 

Juniper, assessing that it was not a good situation, panicked a little, grabbed the diamond back up, and the electric whip which the young man had dropped by his feet. Out of the corner of her eye, Juniper saw the mass of ogres move as one into the ring. Turning to face them, she cracked the whip and sparks went flying. From outside she could vaguely hear sirens sounding. The audience was holding its breath. The ogres progressed towards Juniper who, not knowing what else to do, and having seen too many old Earth movies, grabbed the young man standing close to her, and held the whip close to his neck. She could feel her heart pounding in her neck as she yanked the young man closer to her.

 

“Don’t anybody move or this guy gets it!”

 

The audience gasped in horror at the cliche and Juniper cracked the whip once more for emphasis. Amaury DeLeon wished that he was being lathered up by a six-armed, three-balled pleasure sprite as he watched a “minor hiccup” become a “calamitous catastrophe”.

 

One of the ogres started toward Juniper, throwing off its black cloak to reveal a steel breast plate and several and imaginative hammers and cleavers. It opened its slimy, massive maw.

 

 “She’s taken the prince!” the ogre roared.


	2. I Can Speak Pimp

1.

 

It can be said that there are very few things in life that one can prepare for. Juniper prepared for even less. It wasn’t that she was lazy. It wasn’t that she wasn’t smart. It was just that, whenever she did try to prepare for anything, ever, that thing was sure to not happen and to not happen magnificently, so she simply didn’t bother anymore. If you didn’t have a plan, you couldn’t be stuck thinking of what to do next when your plan failed.

 

Juniper was stuck thinking of what to do next. She grasped the person around the neck with one arm, and held the electrified whip with the other, slashing it about in an effort to scare off the ogres. The ogres weren’t scare off. Now, all of them had thrown back their dark cloaks to reveal each was packing more creative heat than the last. Thankfully, there were no guns. Ogres can’t use guns. The triggers are too small for their beefy fingers. They prefer clubs, axes, cudgels, and hammers. It also has the added bonus of showing off their ogrely strength, which they liked to do a lot.

 

Juniper looked around her, for anything that might help. Then looked around again.

 

“Ow,” a voice said dully as a small bolt fell from above and hit Juniper’s hostage. Up.

The ogres advanced on them, and juniper snapped her whip at the closest one. With a small hiss, he grabbed the whip in mid air. Juniper watched, impressed, as he hissed and let it roll out of his hand, a giant burn mark left behind. She pulled the whip back towards her to read for another crack, at its face this time. No, eyes? Ear? Groin? She could smell the ogre now. He was tickling his palms with what looked like a nail-decorated stone column. How the ogre had gotten nails into stone, Juniper didn’t know, but there were things you just didn’t question when they were being aimed at your head. Juniper looked up and, to her relief, saw the mess she had made before. Pieces of metal wire and bolts had started to tinnily rain down on Juniper and her captor.

 

Juniper coiled the whip and let it free, soaring above her. The ogre was charging. Juniper closed her eyes and held onto the whip with both hands, as tight as she could. The whip wrapped around its target above her and Juniper was sent rocketing up. the whip sparked and cracked, as, immediately to her right, a giant elevator car went plummeting down past her, taking out part of the main tent pole on the way. The alter-tower began to alter. Juniper continued to shoot upwards. Her arms felt like they were being torn from her body and it felt like her clothing was tearing from the waste down. Juniper forced one eye open, which was difficult to do mid-flight, and looked down to see that she had made a mistake. She had taken her hostage with her. Flailing below and next to her was her hostage, his cloakish coat caught on the various objects on Juniper’s tool belt that she used for when she wanted to steal expensive things and climb alter-towers. The coat thing on the person was ripping, and her belt was sagging, digging into her hip line. She needed to be rid of the weight. It hurt. It was a good thing the person’s clothes were ripping. Then again, if the person fell, they would definitely die and that would be unintentional murder on Juniper’s part. Juniper loved stealing things but she didn't like killing people. It always got messy, literally or figuratively.

 

The end of the elevator cables was appearing as the building was shifting around them. There wasn’t much time. Juniper heard a loud ripping sound and immediately reached down to pull the person with her, thereby momentarily saving them, only to realize she had let go of the whip. Really, it didn’t matter because they’d almost reached the end of the line anyway, but it was still sort of an “aw shit” moment because there was no plan from that point on. There had never been a plan, and now Juniper was in trouble again, but this time with another person. Juniper and her baggage soared through the air as one of the building altered, the cables and elevators falling, a wall curving in, and a large window positioning itself right over their heads. Juniper pushed the person slightly in front of her, hoping the cloaky jacket would shield her as they both burst through double-paned malleable glass. Well, burst wasn’t exactly the word. It was more like how a finger pokes at gelatin—at first the gelatin fights back and bends around the finger, but eventually the finger breaks the surface of the gelatin and then it’s easy to wiggle through the entire thickness of the gelatin. Only, there was a lot more shattering glass.

 

For the third time that day, Juniper was soaring through the air with no particular destination. She flew through the air, the alter-tower altering behind her, gelatin glass falling below her, and a ship rising under her.

 

Juniper landed on the main view screen of a small ship, much the way a bug lands on a windshield of a fast vehicle. Juniper lay in shock, the impact ringing through her bones as she was lifted into the air. She was attempting to gain her breath back when the view screen wipers began pummeling her face.

 

“Ow!” Juniper popped up onto her hands and knees, thankful the ship was rising up and not moving forwards or backwards. Juniper took an old wrench out of her tool belt that she’d forgotten she had and hit the view screen repeatedly with it, dodging the wipers, until the tinter function broke. Below her, inside the ship, was a family of small, startled Fenniens.

“Stop that!” Juniper said when the wipers began to move faster. The Fenniens turned the wipers off. “Let me into your ship or I’ll break this view screen. I have a Turning Laser. I could burn my way in,” Juniper threatened the possibly least threatening thing she could threaten, but it would be something. Fenniens were small and meek by nature, but really good at mathematics. They were like the nerds of the universe.

 

A hatch opened on the side of the ship and Juniper slowly, very carefully, began to shimmy her way around the front of the ship, which was still rising in the air. Pretty soon she would run out of breathable atmosphere. Juniper cursed the gods, prayed to win a lottery, and did a jump-swing-wrangle into the side hatch, which sent her somersaulting into the cargo hold and crashing into a bale of Fennien Yak wool. There were two loud clunks behind her and the whipping sound of wind stopped.

“I don’t suppose you have a plan?”

 

Juniper nearly jumped out of her clothes. She did jump to her feet. She’d practically forgotten that the person she’d been lugging around was actually a person. And somehow that person had managed to land on the ship with her and made it into the cargo hold too. Actually, on closer inspection, he seemed to be Lunoid. Juniper stared at him. At least, he seemed to identify as a him. Really, the pronoun thing only existed in a few languages anymore, but Jupiter was raised by ancestors of Earth and a lot of Earth’s languages had pronouns, so…. Just more things to worry about.

 

“Who the hell are you,” Juniper stared at him. Somehow, his hood had managed to not fall away from his head despite having flown multiple stories through the air, swinging off an alter-tower, and hijacking a ship. He took the hood down and there was a slight spark. Static charge to keep it up then. Some beings just really wanted to be mysterious. Jupiter stared at him. Definitely Lunoid. Lunoids weren’t often seen off of their planet, but if you saw one, they were easy to place by the silvery, watery look in their three eyes that made them seem like they were constantly thinking of other, deeper things, or just really high.

 

“I’m the prince.”

 

Alright. The most important question then. “Why the hell are you here?”

 

“You took me. Am I a hostage? Do you have demands,” he said offhandedly, “demands would be interesting. Unless it’s money. That’s boring.”

 

Juniper stared at the prince again. He was staring at his nails with a furrowed brow. He looked like, if he’d had a file, he’d be filing his nails. He seemed to realize, however, that Juniper was just gawking at him, so he elaborated.

 

“I guess you didn’t know. I’m the prince of Lupine III. I’m in line for the throne when my uncle has finished educating me on all of the goings-on of how to run a world. So you’ve kidnapped royalty. What will you do now?”

 

“Um excuse um…,” a small Fennien voice interrupted them from the doorway of the cargo hold into what was presumably the cockpit. It was a very small ship.

 

Juniper glanced at the prince. The prince was watching her as if waiting for a show to start. Juniter stared back purposely, nodding slightly behind her, and got the distinct feeling that the prince could read her thoughts when something flickered over his eyes. He didn’t so much nod as shrug an acknowledgment at her. The prince brushed past Juniper heavily. He stopped in front of the Fenniens. The whole little Fennien family had gathered in the doorway. The prince knelt down and removed a ring from his finger. He presented it to the Fennien that had spoken. They all stared at the ring in a tiny huddle, making little chirps and coos. This allowed the prince to usher them into the cargo area like herded sheep.

 

“Okay, now you can do it,” the prince said to Juniper. Juniper stared at him, slightly impressed, as the prince guided the confused Fenniens across the cargo area. Juniper promptly opened the cargo hatch and pushed them out of it. With a few small squeaks, the tiny family fell away from the ship and disappeared.

 

“How did you know what I meant to do,” Juniper stared at the prince.

 

“I didn’t. I thought you were going to tie them up with that rope by the yak wool over there.”

 

“Oh,” Juniper said, “Well, it’s okay. Fenniens bounce.”

 

Just then, the ship shuddered around them and Juniper braced herself against the wall of the cargo hold, juttering and jogging against it and trying not to chip her teeth. When the shudder subsided, Juniper ran for the cockpit. She had to duck through the door and squat down to sit in the pilot’s chair. On the view screen was a diagram of where the ship had been damaged and also a small picture of the ship that had fired at them. It was the ogres. Only ogres would have a ship that ugly.

 

Juniper immediately looked all around her, at the console, sized up the fact that everything was mini-sized but mostly standard, and took the controls. The ship was beeping at her cutely that it was damaged. Juniper spun it around so that they were facing the ogre ship, head-on. Then proceeded to jump into warp drive backwards, so she could stick a middle finger up at the ogres.

 

When they puttered out of warp drive, the ship still beeping cutely at her, Juniper let herself sigh heavily and collapsed onto the really low console.

 

“Hmm,” the prince said behind her. Juniper jumped yet again. Somehow, she managed to always forget about the prince. “You kidnapped me,” he said almost approvingly.

 

“I didn’t mean to,” Juniper whined.

 

“Yet here I am.”

 

“Well, can you just like…” Juniper waved her hand around, “go back?”

 

“Will you take me back?”

 

“Are you kidding? Those ogres will kill me.”

 

“Seeing as there isn’t another spaceship here, and you won’t take me back then...no, I can’t go back. Not without dying immediately in deep space.”

 

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck,” Juniper sighed.

 

Note: You will be happy to know that many alien languages have the equivalent of the same expression, though many do not use the same expression for fornication because many races highly value fucking.

 

Juniper highly valued her life. She couldn’t take the prince back or she’d be killed, or possibly worse, for kidnapping royalty. But, if she sent the prince back dead, it would definitely be worse. If she was caught.

 

“You’re not going to dump me and try to outrun universal law authorities, the ogre bodyguards, _and_ the authorities from Lupine III are you?"

 

“Er… So, Prince…?”

 

“Just Prince.”

 

“Prince Just?”

 

“Prince is fine.”

 

“Okay, Prince. Um, I’m assuming you’d like to get home safe, so—”

 

“Not really.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“I just don’t. I don’t like those ogre guards. They think I can’t understand them, but they’re always talking about stealing my third eye when I sleep.”

 

“Ugh. That’s why you never hire ogres.”

 

“My uncle hired them.”

 

“Your uncle has bad taste."

 

“He’s alright, as a person. He treats me just like the real prince.”

 

“Wait, what? You just said you’re the prince. Are you the prince or not?!” Juniper’s hand inched towards the evacuation button. She could grab onto the console and eject him out of the ship with the vacuum that—

 

“I am. Well, the closest thing to it.”

 

“Explain,” Juniper said slowly, her hand inching closer.

 

“The actual prince of Lupine III died two years ago. AI unit stand-ins were built to replace him so that the population wouldn’t know. I have the only copy of all of his memories. His personality, too, if a bit diluted from all the copying. I fill his role, politically and personally. So, for all purposes, I am the prince.”

 

“Why an AI stand-in? What can’t the citizens know?”

 

“The prince died while taking part in an orgy. Specifically from auto-erotic asphyxiation with pig entrails. Intestine, I believe.”

 

“…Huh,” was all Juniper could think to say.

 

“Apparently he had a birthing kink. I assume the entrails were supposed to be representing an umbilical cord and they became wrapped around his neck. Fatally. It’s considered a crime to have any sort of intercourse with animals, or animal entrails, on our world. So it had to be kept quiet. Thus Prince 2 was created. Then Prince 2 suffered a malfunction, so I was activated. I’m Prince 3.1.”

 

“Why the .1?”

 

“I was upgraded to get rid of the birthing kink.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Do you have a nail file,” Prince asked.

 

“Sooooo,” Juniper tried not to stare, but in all of her travels, she’d never seen an AI so perfectly Lunoid. It was something no race seemed to be able to get down. None of them were capable of making AIs that perfectly resembled themselves. There was always some sort of uncanny valley thing going on if you knew the race well enough. Juniper didn’t know much about Lunoids, but if they acted anything like humans, Prince seemed like a perfect AI. “As long as you’re with me, I’m going to get chased, aren’t I?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Even if you I manage to take you back, will I still be hunted down?”

 

“For some time, definitely. If you can evade them long enough, the parliament might forget about it. Not sure about Universal Police.”

 

“Are Lunoids’ third eyes supposed to blink?” Juniper realized she had been circling Prince subconsciously, looking him over. It was easy to do because he was a tiny bit shorter than her. Juniper wondered how old Prince was supposed to be.

 

“Sometimes. If there’s danger of exposure to heat or severe amounts of particles in the air. But usually, no.”

 

Huh. So maybe he wasn’t perfect. Prince’s third eye blinked about once a sentence. She’d thought he hadn’t blinked enough, but Lunoids were different than humans after all. It’d be no good assuming an AI programmed to be one would think the same way as she would, either. That might explain his apparent lack of concern for Juniper’s situation. Or just a bigger emphasis on logic. After all, Prince would be fine either way. Unless Juniper really did chuck him out space-side.

 

“If I voluntarily take you back and surrender, do you think they’d cut me a deal?”

 

“Abducting a royal is probably punishable by death on Lupine III. I don’t think it’s been done before, so they might only imprison you for life, or maybe until they decide to execute you. I can’t be sure. You’ve made history.”

 

“Always a pioneer,” Juniper said queasily. She was beginning to feel space-sick. She sat down in the pilot chair and rubbed her temples. Prince sat in the co-pilot’s chair, uninvited. Juniper glanced at him and he looked massive in the tiny chair. Juniper realized she must look ridiculous too. She gazed out the view screen. They’d have to avoid any super bright stars since the she’d broken the view screen tinter. They sat in silence for a while, the ship floating idly forward from its earlier propulsion. A piece of space trash shaped like a llama crossed the path of the view screen then disappeared. It had probably been a body frozen, with gathered space dust and random objects on it.

 

Jupiter shuddered. “So, is there a reason that you doomed me to probably eternal imprisonment or execution by tagging along?”

 

“I didn’t plan to be dragged through a big top when I woke up this morning.”

 

Jupiter wondered if AIs slept. “Well, you certainly didn’t make any move to jump out with the Fenniens.”

 

“I don’t bounce.”

 

“Hn,” Jupiter sighed.

 

“If my memory is broken, there won’t be any of the prince left. There can't be copies laying around for people to find, so I'm the only one. If I die, the prince dies. That’s what I should have said,” Prince said slowly.

 

“So is it Prince 3.1 that wants to run away from home or is it the prince’s memories?”

 

“Eternal conundrum of AIs, I assure you. Is it the memories, is it a new individual personality forming,” Prince waved his hands about his head absentmindedly, “no one knows. All the sci-fi books were right.”

 

“Is it really that bad? I mean, it’s your programming, right?”

 

“Being created as a stand-in, a replacement for someone who others miss and long for and you know you can’t ever be, because you’re not a complete being? Waiting for the Lunoid population to figure out I’m an expensive copy?”

 

Juniper stared at him. He stared back, his third eye unblinking. “Naw. It’s actually pretty rad," he shrugged. "I can drink all I want and never die of liver failure.”

 

“But you still get drunk?!” Jupiter’s eyes widened and she leaned forward eagerly.

 

“The chemical composition of most alcohol seems to mess a bit with my wiring, so, basically yeah.”

Jupiter sat back in her mini chair. The fact that so many new drugs had come into being, especially after the Jupiter Laws, and still people hadn’t come up with a way to drink alcohol constantly and not get liver or kidney failure was a mystery to Jupiter. She half suspected the people that really wanted to drink that much didn’t particularly care about their livers or kidneys, but if Jupiter could drink an Atesinian Mojito every day and not die, that was almost worth putting herself into an AI for. “That’s bad-ass,” Jupiter said admiringly and wistfully.

 

“Yeah,” Prince agreed.

 

“So why do you not wanna go home. Prince 3.1 or Prince, it doesn’t matter.”

 

Prince sat quietly for a second and his third eye blinked, slowly, as if tired. “I don’t really know. Maybe to get away from my uncle. He treats me well—just like he treated the prince—but it’s a bit uncanny in a way. Don’t give me that look. An AI talking about ‘uncanny’, go ahead.”

 

Juniper snorted. “I've never met an AI before, and you seem natural enough, I guess. Anyway, doesn't matter. I hate to break it to you but I don’t have any plans from here on. I was in that alter-tower to steal the Cabal Diamond. I don’t live on that world. But now I don’t have the diamond, which means I don’t have any money.”

 

“Oh, you mean this?” Prince reached into his cloaky cape thing and pulled out none other than the Cabal Diamond. “It fell out of your hand or pocket or something as we were flying out of the tower, but I caught it. Here.”

 

Prince put the twelve-pound diamond directly into Juniper’s shocked hands. She looked from the diamond up to Prince, dazed. Prince’s third eye blinked at her innocently. She looked around the cockpit and saw a satchel hanging on a wall. She dumped out the contents—it looked like a first aid kit, onto the floor. She took off one of the four shirts she was wearing (better safe than sorry and she rarely got to a washer), wrapped the diamond in it, and shoved it in the satchel. She threw that over her shoulder and squatted back into the tiny captain’s chair.

 

“Just to be clear, I don’t like you,” Junper said at Prince.

 

“Do you say that to everyone you meet?”

 

“Pretty much, yeah.”

 

“Then, I’ll wait to pass judgment on you,” Prince remarked wisely and kind of douchebaggedly. “Are we taking the diamond somewhere?”

 

The truth was, Juniper wanted to dump Prince right then and there. She could take the chance and try to escape authorities forever. She didn’t work well with others and they never seemed to work well with her. And, working with others meant splitting commissions. Juniper didn’t normally take such huge jobs as the Cabal Diamond, but if she did, she wanted to keep all the pay herself. What was the point risking herself for half of a pay-off? Prince seemed the quiet type and he seemed to not know much about the world, despite having the prince of Lupine III’s memories. She wouldn’t have to split the pay-off with him. She could just leave him in the ship and get a new ride when it came time. Let him decide what to do with himself.

 

“Yeah. I gotta deliver it to my agent. Thanks to you, we’re gonna have to keep our heads down. But whatever.”

 

“I can’t wait to go to another world.”

 

“It’s a world full of crooks and pimps.”

 

“I can’t wait to meet a pimp.” Prince smiled a vague smile and his third eye blinked.

 

Juniper shook her head and turned back to the flight console. “Alright, to G Street Planet then… I just realized something,” Juniper started up the ship again.“I speak quite a few languages, but I don’t speak what you speak on Lupine III. I don’t even know what you actually speak there.”

 

“Lapis. But I speak 297 languages fluently. Yours is a Spanglish variation of the Semi-Universal Language 5. Most politicians, royalty, political leaders, and diplomats all have translators embedded in them now. Mine was just built into me in the process.”

 

“You might be useful after all,” Juniper nodded.

 

“I can speak pimp,” Prince offered.

  
  
"The fact that you just said that makes me highly doubt it," Juniper punched the ship back into overdrive as fast as its little engine could go.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know if any of this is offending anyone. Yell at me on [tumblr.](http://schumie.tumblr.com) Cheers


	3. Childish Gambling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juniper and Prince set out to get a new ship.

Cornelius Blargh, unfortunately, was not a pimp, not technically. It was hard to say what Cornelius Blargh was, actually. Some sort of amalgam of robot, information feeds, and what appeared to be a giant sheep’s skin draped over a crate of pineapples. Blargh’s eyes were glassy and slitted like a sheep’s, and on either side of Blargh’s head, so it was impossible to look at both of them at once when looking directly at it. Juniper usually stared at the tiny pointed ears on top of the woolly mound when she talked to Blargh. In all the universe, Juniper had never run into something else like Cornelius Blargh, so it was understandable that Prince was quiet when meeting Blargh for the first time. Or maybe that was just Prince. He wasn’t very voluntarily chatty.

“Juniiiiiiiiiper Days,” Blargh bleated when Juniper stepped into his dark corner of the G Street Market. She didn’t hate the bustle and fifth of G Street, but G Street was never nice to her. It was where she went to get jobs. Being a lone human thief, it was hard to rustle up many patrons. Blargh gathered requests and sent them to thieves he thought could, or were crazy enough, to do them. In return, he got a cut and knew enough dark secrets to blackmail half a solar system. He chose to live on G Street solely because patrons didn’t feel comfortable going to giant, elegant mansions? Pastures? to request someone to steal things. The G Street Market had a much more typical, reassuring feel for dirty deeds. Thus, Blargh remained on G Street, in the market, and Juniper was forced to basically depend on Blargh.

 

“Did you combleeeeet your job,” Blargh bleated and turned its head slightly at Prince, seeming to grind its white nails that seemed to be there to represent teeth.

 

“I did.”

 

 

“Juniper, am I dreaming,” Prince whispered quietly next to her.

 

 

“Did ewwweee pick up a job partner? You’ll have to figure out your splits on your own. I won’t have no part in that business.”

 

“I know.”

 

“You never work with others, Juniiiiiiper.” Blargh narrowed a grindy metal, slitted stare at Prince, who was standing now with a very absent smile on his face, as if he were humoring two children.

 

“Juniper,” Prince said a little more urgently.

 

“I was in a little over my head. Given the object, and all.” Juniper ignored Prince.

 

“Of course, of course. You’ll have to let me see it to verify, you know.”

 

“I know,” Juniper reached into the small satchel and pulled out the diamond, wrapped in cloth. She unfolded just the very top so that Blargh’s slitted eye could see the 

opalescent glow of the diamond. Only the Cabal Diamond would have the balls to glow and shine like an opal. It gave the deep, colorful swirls of opals, but with the facets and angles and apparent clarity of the highest grade diamond. It wasn’t something that could easily be mistaken or traded out.

 

Blargh was silent for a few moments.

 

There seemed to be numbers running behind Blargh’s eyes, and, of course, there actually were. Blargh was calculating costs, cuts, currency exchanges, and probably contacting the commissioner right there. 

 

“He doesn’t seem much like a pimp,” Prince said with a hint of disappointment. 

 

“That’s usually a  good thing,” Juniper pointed out. 

 

“Not on Lupine III. Prostitutes are treated with great respect if they are not in their cycles. Menstrual cycles happen three-fourths of each month on my world. Anyone who is available and not menstruating is considered very valuable and treated with great courtesy. It is natural to sell sex there.”

 

“That. Sounds like. Absolute. Hell,” Juniper cringed. She felt her stomach cramp and back seize up in sheer horror at the idea. 

 

“Well, it does means that we have a continuously rotating Cabinet,” Prince shrugged. 

 

“Wait, your Cabinet is all females?”

 

Prince stared at Juniper like she was an idiot. “We can’t very well have  males running a world. They’re constantly agressive. Women who are menstruating aren’t allowed in the Cabinet because they’re more similar to men during that stage. I think it’s a good thing. It allows for more rational decisions on the whole, and lots of different minds can weigh in to decide important matters..”

 

Juniper took a second to think about that. “But—you’re a Prince and you’re next in line to rule…”

 

“Only because the king and queen didn’t have a daughter. I assure you, I was a great disappointment, actually. And, unfortunately, a granddaughter isn’t a possibility now, for obvious reasons,” Prince nodded at….all of himself. “I have a female cousin but she is an infant. So...”

 

“So,” Juniper frowned. “Fantastic. You’re an AI replacement for a second-string ruler nobody wants, and I’m  still gonna get killed for accidentally kidnapping you.

There was a loud beeping and an obnoxious crackle sound and Blargh was looking at them again.

 

“I was able to contact the commmmmissioners,” Blargh belted out suddenly. “What’s this about rulers?”

 

“Juniper—” Prince whispered to her and she ignored.

 

“Great, should I have your bots take the item then?” Juniper artfully redirected the conversation and no one at all noticed. Blargh stared at her out of one slitted eye for a quiet second, then seemed to shrug, if a robotic sheep could shrug.

 

“There’s a catch.”

 

“Juniper,” Prince pulled lightly at her shirt sleeve, which she also ignored.

 

Juniper’s insides seemed to knot up then deflate exasperatedly. “Ughhhh. I swear, if this is a set-up--"

 

“The commmmissioners, two of them, will meet you at a secured dock. You won’t have to disembark your craft.

Juniper sighed. It was like they had ordered a pizza and decided at the exact last moment that they didn’t wanted it delivered to the house down the street.

 

“Alright, where is it,” Juniper eyed Blargh warily.

 

“Ju.Ni.Per,” Prince whispered, more frantically.

 

“You can also just leave it here, but I’ll have to lower your portion to twenty percent.”

 

“No goddamn way I risked my neck for it and got stuck with this guy only to get twenty percent. I’m not letting someone else get all the credit. What world is it, Blargh.”

 

“Saline. One of the moons in the Equox system.”

 

“Ooh,” Prince said quietly next to Juniper.

 

“You can pop off at Lupine III after. It’s a fun planet. Multiple moons. Good food. Lots of drugs if you know the right people. More sex houses than you can shake a dick at. Watch out for the pimps though.”

 

“I can teach you to speak pimp,” Prince said helpfully to Juniper.

 

Juniper nearly turned around and left. Instead she turned to Prince and gave him a look she hoped said that she thought he had wanted to stay away from Lupine III and if he was so keen to go back why hadn’t he left her alone to begin with and if she went anywhere near Lupine III, she could be arrested and tortured or killed or whatever because didn’t he say that their judicial system didn’t have a sentencing for royal kidnapping yet?

 

“Do you have a stomachache,” Prince asked.

 

“No,” Juniper gritted through her teeth. She looked at Blargh, a strange, bitter-tinted anger convulsing in her chest. “Alright, I’ll take it with me for now. If it’s too much trouble, I’ll come back and get my damn twenty percent. Know anywhere here I can get a cheap ship?”

 

“Only the normal meeeans,” Blargh bleated and a piece of paper printed quickly and emerged from some unknown spot under the sheep pelt.

Juniper nodded her thanks and turned to leave, grabbing Prince’s arm and pulling him alone. It was difficult because he kept glancing back at Blargh, who appeared to be munching a cardboard box.

 

“Juni—”

 

"No,” Juniper sighed exasperatedly. She turned to Prince, stopping their small path through the market. “You are not dreaming. Blargh isn’t really a sheep. And he’s not electric. I…don’t know what Blargh is, actually.”

 

“Oh,” Prince said with a hint of relief. “Are you going to steal a ship again?”

 

Juniper felt offended that Prince would assume her normal means of acquiring a ship was stealing. She never stole ships. Too easy to track, unreliable. Today was an exception out of necessity. Juniper glanced at Prince next to her, perfect dark skin, giant glistening third eye, sculpted face, and ability to ruin everything. Juniper grinned.

 

“Of course not. We’re going to win one, fair and square, and you’re going to help.”

 

“Ooh,” Prince’s two lower eyes sparkled quietly. “What should I do?”

 

“Just stand near me and be yourself,” Juniper patted him on the shoulder, leading the way. “You might even get to speak pimp.”

 

 

ll.

 

 

The gambling halls of G Street where less halls and more piles of garbage stacked up to create walls and doors separating the inside from the outside. It was actually done quite artfully. The halls served their purpose well, the clientele of so many varied shapes and sizes, that they all brought in their own items to sit on. As the walls were impermanent, the doors could be widened or raised (very carefully) to accommodate the larger patrons, but they were always guarded. As it was, the halls had betting on everything from Cerberus rat fights to the hoity-toity card games of old Earth that were popular with the current trend-setting generation. There was a distinct divide in the socio-economic statuses between the types of gambling, and everyone kept to their own poison. The first rule of G Street gambling halls was to know which table you belonged at. Thankfully, the tables with buckets of satellite crystals and universal dollars weren’t likely to be the ones with the people Juniper was looking for. Juniper dragged an observant Prince along until they found a small table in a dark corner with only three other betters. The game was Dipstick. Dipstick was created by crude people and played by crude people. The table had more empty moonsheen bottles on it than bets. 

 

“Perfect,” Juniper pulled prince along. 

 

“Is that…Dipstick,” Prince asked amusedly.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Are you good at it?”

 

“No. But it’s the type of game to most likely have someone betting their home. Or their ship. Sometimes both.”

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“’Cuz I’ve done it.” They dodged and weaved the screeching rats in the pin with heaving, shouting people gathered round them. Juniper sat down at the Dipstick table, signaling Prince to stand behind her. The dealer looked up from the sticks he was shaking in a black box and his eyes lit up.

 

“Juniper!”

 

“Ugh” Juniper replied.

 

“How have you been?! Every time I see you, you’re more radiant. You never contacted me again after—”

 

“Hey…Bir…”

 

“Biron!”

 

“Right. Biron…honey…what are the bets tonight,” Juniper looked at the other three patrons at the table. One was at least half human (the other half Juniper couldn’t place) wearing some type of animal skin jacket with patches. Another was…possibly a Taotie, Juniper couldn’t tell. The third was a haggard middle-aged Ponpon with a smoking pipe taped to his face.

 

“A grave plot on Sirn, a week’s wages of this fine toothpick artisan here,” the dealer motioned to the Taotie, “and a month of Titan rations,” he nodded to the man with the patched jacket.

 

“Not good enough. You,” Juniper turned to the jacket man. “You’re a supply runner from Titan, yeah? Want to wager your ship?”

 

“My ship…” the man’s voice was tough and cracked and dry, like the bottoms of a fire-walker’s feet. “She’s my livelihood. Why would I wager that?”

 

“Because this,” Juniper threw a thumb back at Prince, “is a Lupine III sex master AI.”

 

The jacketed one peered at Juniper from behind a shriveled, leather face that matched his jacket almost too well, then his eyes traveled to Prince. Prince did his best to do…nothing. He blinked amicably, at least.

 

“Never heard of a sex master AI from Lupine.”

 

“That’s because only two of them exist,” Juniper placed both hands on Prince and brought him closer to the table.

 

“Technically, one now,” Prince chimed in helpfully.

 

Juniper peered at the leather person over Prince’s gorgeous, dark shoulder. Prince’s curled, short hair tickled her nose and she was practically sickened when she realized just how attractive Prince really was. She’d been too busy trying to get rid of him before to notice. Now that she had, it made her wager even stronger.

 

“And he doesn’t have broken parts? No technical problems?”

 

Juniper nudged Prince.

 

“I had a routine diagnostics check last Lunar cycle,” Prince shrugged.

 

All three of the other betters at the table eyed Prince, then looked back at Juniper slowly, judging. Juniper could feel their reluctance and interest battling it out. The Taotie seemed to be going through its pockets to see if it had anything to offer for Prince. But Juniper wasn’t looking for Taotian books of wisdom or anything like that. 

 

She wanted—needed—a ship. And some money too, preferably.

 

“You could get a lot for him. You ever seen an AI this good?”

 

“I  am rather exceptional for my kind. Probably. I haven’t met another of my kind,” Prince nodded.

 

The leather person hmm’d, looking Prince up and down once more, taking in everything from his sandaled feet to his bare, gleaming midriff, and third eye. The man was stalling, Juniper realized. Hoping to get her to sweeten the deal.

 

“If you’re not interested, I’ll find another ta—”

 

“I’ll bet my ship,” a quiet, hissy voice spoke up. It was the Ponpon. Juniper had almost forgotten she was there. “It’s a Sylph B-502.” It wasn’t what Juniper was expecting. Sylphs were two models old of a technology that took a lot of years to advance. But, Sylphs were reliable. The smoke tendrils from the Ponpon’s pipe wrapped quietly around Prince, behind her. 

 

Juniper nodded.

 

“If that’s settled,” the dealer piped up, “please place your bets on the table. Or…er…” Leather face grumbled and got up jerkily to leave the table. The Ponpon put an ignition card on the table. The Taotie grumbled a little bit, sitting back to watch the game between the Ponpon and Juniper. Juniper sat down on an upturned crate and took Prince’s hand with her, slapping it on the table. Prince kneeled down next to her, content to watch the goings on of the gambling hall around them.

 

“How do we know if we win,” Prince leaned in. Juniper was annoyed to find that, up close, Prince had a strange scent. Like what she smelled as a kid when she went to the museum and smelled artificial Earth flowers. It was sweet and also musky and it clashed horribly with Juniper’s clothing that hadn’t been washed in…a while. Juniper wrinkled her nose.

 

“You’ll know if we don’t.”

 

Prince shrugged and went back to staring off while Juniper’s eyes zeroed in on the cards.

 

“Players ready,” the dealer said entirely to Juniper, beaming. Juniper shrugged and the dealer grinned again, his three arms shuffling the colored sticks on the table. The rules were simple. Each stick had a number on the bottom side. The goal was to get as close to 15 without going over. Each color of stick was worth a different amount of money. There were three colors of sticks. Yellow was worth the least, green was in the middle, and brown had the highest value. Green and brown tended to have higher numbers on them. If you pulled a green stick and got a 6 and pulled a brown stick and got a 5, you could chance it and pull another green or brown, or you could stay safe with yellows, which were usually lower numbers, and work up to 15. But then if you and another player both had 15 and that player had all brown and green sticks, they won, as the value of their sticks was higher. 

 

The Ponpon played it relatively safe, reaching for a green stick. Juniper did the same and gaped when she turned hers over to see a 10. That hardly ever happened with green sticks. The dealer…Bier—whatever, took a brown stick, laying it out for them to see. He had a 7. The Ponpon took another green stick. Juniper’s eyes grazed over the pile of sticks on the table. She could go for another green, and hopefully get a five or four, or she could safely draw from the yellows and work her way up.

 

Juniper grabbed a green. 

 

The dealer drew another stick, giving him 13.  


 

“Show your dipsticks, please,” the dealer chirped, fluffing his eyelashes at Juniper.

 

“Prince…” Juniper whispered. 

 

Juniper turned over her first stick, and as the Ponpon was turning over hers, Juniper jumped up, upsetting the whole table, snatching the ignition key for the Sylph in one hand, launched herself over the falling table and cardboard boxes, and began booking it away from the table as fast as she could shouting, “Cover for me, Byron!”

 

“Anything for you!” A singing voice called after her as she dodged a large pair of flippers and jumped over a crate. A figure jumped over it, appearing at her side.

 

“So, this is how I know we lost,” Prince said jovially next to her.

 

“Focus on running,” Juniper panted, dodging another body. The Ponpon was chasing them, but not getting far on her stubby legs. They were almost to the door, and if they could get past the guards, they could make it. Probably. The two giant guards moved in to block the doorway, giant silver bars in their hands.

 

“Juniper….” Prince said next to her.

 

“Shut up, I’m thinking!”

 

People around them had seemed to realize something was going on and had started to stand up and spectator. The door disappeared behind a crowd of people, and Juniper had to push and shove her way through. Her face covered in ooze from a species she hadn’t seen before, Juniper made it to the clearing in front of the door and screeched to a halt.

 

The guards stood, hulking, staring at her, daring her to try to get through them. Juniper looked left and right but it was futile. She knew there was only one door in the place. Prince pulled up next to her, hardly breaking a sweat.

 

“What do we do?” He said as if enjoying himself greatly.

 

“LOVE IS THE STRONGEST WEAPOOOOOOOOOOON,” a singing voice cried out, and a blur shot before them, three arms going in swinging towards the guards. The guards were distracted by the flying arms and loud pink suit of the dealer.

 

“Now!” Juniper hissed and ran to the side of the very army, tangled mess at the door, straight towards the wall.

 

“Aaaaaaaa!” Juniper screamed, tearing into and through the wall, putting all of her weight into it. Cardboard crinkled and folded and collapsed around her, packing peanuts tumbling down like an avalanche. Juniper pushed through, swimming in the corrugated paper until she broke out into the dank light of G Street market. Blinking for a second, Juniper glanced behind her in time to see Prince erupt through the wall in a shower of Styrofoam. Juniper glanced over toward the door, where sounds of passionate screams could be heard from inside. There was a strange crumpling sound. And the sound of things tearing. Prince pulled Juniper back from the wall slowly. Juniper stared as the entire front of the gambling hall collapsed, sending Styrofoam, cardboard and dust everywhere. Prince nodded approvingly. Juniper shivered at the leftover chalky feeling of cardboard on her hands, turned back to the street and took off at a run, Prince on her feet.

 

“Where are we going now,” Prince shouted to Juniper as they ran through the crowded market.

 

“Back to the hanger bay, of fucking course!”

 

“That dealer back there really likes you!”

 

“Focus!”

 

“I think it’s sweet! You guys have a thing?”

 

“He has three dicks and two vaginas! I’d be dumb to reject him!”

 

“I only have one of each! Lucky!”

 

“Shuttup, I can’t run and talk,” Juniper wheezed.

 

They dodged a reptile-shaped fruit stand and came out into the main street. Juniper skidded to a halt and Prince nearly plowed into her, stopping just in time.

 

“What? Oh…” Prince realized what Juniper was looking at. It was a giant ogre, across the street, holding out a holograph of Juniper flying out of the alter tower with Prince.

 

“Orion’s belt, fuck me,” Juniper groaned.

 

“I try to stay away from belts in sex. Past death by asphyxiation and all,” Prince shrugged.

 

“How fast can ogres run,” Juniper glanced at Prince.

 

“I…don’t know, actually.”

 

“Me neither. Hope we’re faster.”

 

Juniper took off, trying to appear leisurely while walking through the crowd as quickly as possible. Prince followed, doing his own light speed walk, but turning heads as he went.

 

“Prince,” Juniper hissed, “keep your head down. You attract too much attention.”

 

“I can’t help it. I was made attractive,” Prince sighed close behind her.

 

Juniper groaned, glancing over her shoulder at where the ogre had been. Had been.

 

“Hay!” A growling yell echoed out over the crowd. “Thar! They're thar!”   


 

Juniper hadn’t seen the second ogre. Juniper took a deep breath and bolted around the group of people milling about in front of her. She vaulted over a small child, and took a running slide under a tableware stall, scraping the side of her leg harshly before popping back up on the other side. She glanced over her shoulder, the large form of the ogre visible attempting to wade through the crowd at least twenty meters back. Juniper grinned and took off towards the hanger bay. She turned a corner at the end of the street and went through an alley to try to shake off the ogres even further, coming out on the West side of the hanger bay. She came to a halt in front of the lines and lines of ships, of all different makes and sizes. There were hundreds of ships in the bay.

 

“Hey,” Prince stopped silently next to her, sending a shriek out of Juniper. “Sorry, I’m really quiet sometimes,” Prince noted offhandedly. “So which ship are we stealing?”

 

“I…have no idea. We’re gonna have to go down the rows and look for a Sylph,” Juniper groaned. “Let’s go before those damn bodyguards of yours show—”

 

“Oh, they’re already here.”

 

As Prince said that, three ogres came huffing down the road toward the hanger bay.

 

“Fuck!”

 

“I have an idea.” Prince snatched the ignition card from Juniper’s hand. He looked at it for a second, Juniper glancing at him and back at the ogres. “There we go,” Prince said, clicking a small button on the card.

 

From two aisles over and half way down the bay, a horn-only rendition of Living La Vida Loca began to play.

 

“Found it,” Prince smiled.


	4. The Grape Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juniper and Prince stop off to get a new paint job.

One thing about stealing a ship is that you can only be so picky. As Juniper opened the hatch of the purple  Sylph B-502 with orange sun flares painted on the side and the name “purple tickle pickle” embossed into the hull, she thought she could have perhaps been a bit pickier. She ran into the ship, Prince right behind her like a shadow. He closed the hatch behind them and Juniper ran to the pilot’s seat. She had to admit, the Sylph was a step up from the Fennien cargo ship earlier—she could actually stand in the cockpit without hitting her head. The rest—well, stealers can’t be choosers. The interior was purple and neon green splatter-painted artificial hide that squeaked when Juniper planted her butt in it and started flipping switches to get the engines going. Prince plopped down calmly in the co-pilot seat next to her, crossing his legs.

“Where are we going now,” Prince asked.

“To deliver the product, of course,” Juniper snapped. “If we can get out of the cargo bay before those trolls beat us to a pulp.”

“Ogres.”

“Whatever.”

“Is the engine charged up now?

“Yes,” Juniper snapped. “Oh.” Juniper 

The other thing about stealing a ship is that someone is going to invariably want it back. But that didn’t matter at this point.

“Can I say ‘hit it’ before you turn on the thrusters?”

“No.” Juniper hit the thrusters and the ship rose off the floor. Several squeaking noises followed by fwomps from the ogres falling off the outside of the ship were covered by the sound of the thrusters.

“Hit it,” Prince whispered as Juniper hit it and they took off over the other ships and out of the hangar bay, into space.

 

 

PART II

 

 

Another thing about stealing a ship is that you can’t precisely predict the condition that the ship is in when stolen. For instance, whether the cooling system is fully operational, or whether all engines are functioning at full capacity, or whether the ship has a sufficient amount of fuel to get you where you would like to go.

Juniper was sweating.

“Why the hell are we going so slow?”

“If this cute little diagram of the ship is accurate, it’s because one of the engines isn’t operating at full capacity. It’s a really nice red in the picture though,” Prince added helpfully.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes,” Prince answered. “Also, we’re out of fuel. Out soon, anyway.”

“Just my luck.”

“I think we’re pretty lucky.”

Juniper stared at Prince, daring him to continue. He did.

“We managed to steal the ship, get away from my guards, and we’re…one twenty-fourth of the way to our destination.

“—And almost out of fuel in a ship that basically moans for attention.”

“I wish I could see a ship moan.”

“Whatever,” Juniper punched in some coordinates on the flight panel. “We can stop on Altea.There’s a fueling station with a body shop there. I know someone there who might be able to get us a paint job. She’s discreet so she won’t snitch on us.”

 

PART III

 

“Juniper!” The beautifully round Crestoid chirped excitedly as it bounced towards them. “It’s really you!”

“Hey, Alishia. How have you been?”

“Missing you,” the Crestoid wrapped her six arms around Juniper and hugged her far too tightly.

“That’s…sweet,” Juniper wheezed, tapping out of the hold.

“Ah, sorry! I’m just so excited to see you!” Alishia leaned in and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “I think a lot about you when I’m alone. It makes me ink myself.”

Juniper’s eyes followed Alishia, who bounced away to Prince the moment she had finished her sentence.

“Hello, I’m Alishia. I’m the head mechanic here!”

“Hello,” Prince looked at Juniper amusedly. “I’m Prince. I’m Juniper’s friend.”

“He’s not.”

“I’ll be her best friend one day,” Prince smiled at Alishia.

“Oh, I’m so jealous! You get to travel around with Juniper, you lucky dog. I’m stuck here repairing warp engines and ships that shouldn’t be flying. By the way!! Did you get a new ship, Juniper?”

“Yeah.”

“We stole it,” Prince said proudly.

“Oh my,” Alishia raised three arms to her mouth, then turned to Juniper. “Well, that explains the paint job. You don’t seem like the type for sun flares.”

“Thanks,” Juniper said wholeheartedly. “Say, Alishia, speaking of that, do you think you could give us a quick paint job? Sometimes simple and inconspicuous?”

“Sure, Juniper! I can even use our special radar-jamming paint we got in last month,” Alishia winked.

“Also, one of the engines isn’t running at full capacity…”

“I’ll take a look!” 

“You’re a treasure,” Juniper grasped one of Alishia’s arms and stroked it. Alishia giggled like a school jellyfish and bounced away. Juniper watched her go, only slightly admiring the bouncy bits.

“Stop staring at me,” Juniper snapped.

“I wasn’t staring. I was admiring. You’re quite the romancer, Juniper. That was incredibly smooth. How many partners do you have?”

“Shuttup.”

“Oh, so Alishia is your favorite?”

“Alishia happened once, when we were both high on moonsheen, way back, when we were young and stupid.”

“You’re still young. For your species.”

“Well, it was a long time ago, okay?”

“She still seems to remember,” Prince elbowed Juniper lightly.

“I said, shut it,” Juniper elbowed him back not-so-lightly. “Let’s get some food while we wait.”

Juniper pulled a stool out at the Gianese Raman bar and sat herself down. Prince did the same next to her, smiling and looking around vaguely, as if he were a senile old man someplace vaguely familiar.

Juniper opened a menu then stopped and looked at Prince. “Stop doing that. Also, can you even eat? I just remembered what you are.”

“Yes, I can eat. I can ingest a lot of substances.”

“Eww,” Juniper grimaced into the bowl of ramen that was placed in front of her. She pushed the boiled smirch egg down in the soup once then picked it up and ate it whole. Juniper always ate the best part first. Saving the best for last was only smart if you knew when you were going to die. Next to her, Prince was doing the opposite, pushing the egg down in his soup.

“Just eat it,” Juniper grumbled through a mouthful of noodles.

“It tastes better if you let it marinate in the soup longer,” Prince picked up a noodle and daintily slurped it in one go. Juniper watched, mildly impressed, her own soup broth splattering all over her front.

“If it isn’t Juniper Days, looking…as usual,” a voice rang out behind them.

Juniper was horrible at placing voices, so she didn’t cringe until she turned around to look.

“Hi, Marcob,” Juniper tried to spit out through a mouthful of ramen and failed, splashing more broth down her front.

Before them was a…there’s no easy way to put this in terms you’ll understand, so let’s just say it was a dog-like creature that walked on four legs but had what humans would call an angelic face full of blue eyes and golden curls.

“I saw you come into the body shop. Was that  your purple monstrosity of a ship?”

“Yep,” Juniper turned around again and went back to her ramen battle.

“There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose, but I can’t imagine you acquired that ship through legal means.”

“Got it in a game of dipstick at G Street.” Juniper said through a piece of ocean weed. Prince had turned away from his ramen and was watching their conversation like a table tennis game.

“Crass and dirty, just like you,” the creature called Marcob flipped one of its shining golden curls and tried to look up at Juniper.

“Well, we can’t all lick out own asses clean,” Juniper stood up from her finished soup, took Prince by one arm and reached into her soup bowl with another. She pulled out a broth bone and chucked it away from the ramen stand with all her might. Marcob took off after it at an insane speed, cursing Juniper as he ran away.

“C’mon,” Juniper dragged Prince away. “Let’s go see if our ship is ready.”

“Marcob sure did seem to have a  bone to pick with you,” Prince said.

“Yeah, he’s jealous ‘cuz he’s been after Alishia for years.”

“I thought you said she only happened once, forever ago.”

“Like you said, she doesn’t seem like she’s forgotten.”

“Then, I guess you could say Marcob is…barking up the wrong tree?”

Juniper stopped mid-step and locked eyes with Prince. She stared at him, unblinking. Unbeknownst to Prince, Juniper had felt a slight tingle of admiration and appreciation for Prince in that moment.

“Is your stomach hurting you?”

“No. Let’s go.”

 

PART IV

 

“Oh no, you can’t look,” two of Alishia’s small hands reached up and covered Juniper’s eyes. “You neither,” Alishia chided. Prince raised both one hand to his eyes and grabbed on to Alishia’s shoulder as she guided a fidgety Juniper and an excited Prince into the shop.

“Ta-da~” Alishia smiled charmingly and pulled her hands from Juniper’s eyes.

“Oh, I like it,” Prince nodded next to Juniper approvingly.

“What the hell is this,” Juniper turned to Alishia. Alishia smiled happily.

“Well, I know blue is your favorite color, and I thought the glitter detail would look great on these smooth lines.”

“She’s right, it does,” Prince nodded.

“And it’s less bright and obvious than before, though I left the purple pickle tickle barely visible underneath because I thought it was cute.”

“Yes, less obvious. Now we’re only the fifth most conspicuous ship in this universe.”

“Blue is a conspicuous color,” Prince pointed out.

“I thought you’d like it… I can uncoat it and change it back if you want…” Alishia began wringing her six hands together. She looked as if she might cry. 

“No! No, this is fine. Thanks,” Juniper smiled painfully at Alishia.

“So you like it?” Alishia beamed tearfully at Juniper.

“It’s beautiful,” Juniper said and wiped at a smear of carbon dust on Alisha’s cheek. The poor girl gurgled and let out a low purring sound, blushing wildly. “Do you think you could top us up while we’re here?”

“Sure! Let me get the cables,” Alishia bounced off.

“Wow, this model has to be charged?”

“It was ahead of it’s time but it’s time was a long time ago,” Juniper sighed. “One of the first ships to have AI installed, but it was during a war and the other side managed to hack the AI, so after that they were piloted by hand only.”

“Wow, you know so much about ships,” Prince said admiringly.

“Only the basics. You have to know this stuff when you’re in my job field,” Juniper flipped her hair a little.

“You mean, when you’re a thief?”

“Shut up.”

“Ooh…does Alishia not know?”

“Oh, I know. I think it’s a charm point,” Alishia came bouncing back, caring two cables the size of her head effortlessly. “I just wish she’d come around more.”

“Alishia disappeared under the ship and came out again. “All set! Just give it a bit. I checked the puttering engine and put some seal-o foam on it, but you’re leaking power. You’ll need a new engine eventually. Should hold for now though.”

“Alishia…love…can I put this one on my tab?”

“Hmmm, if you give me a kiss, I’ll call it even,” Alishia blushed deeply.

Prince giggled next to Juniper and Juniper felt the back of her neck heat up.

“Sure. Prince, don’t watch or shove off or something.”

“Right-o,” Prince covered his eyes, leaving his third eye exposed, blinking innocently.”

“Turn around, you creep!”

Prince turned around and hummed lowly to himself. The humming almost covered up the many odd suctioning sounds behind him. It went on for a good minute before there was a particularly loud ‘POP’ noise and Alishia was giggling uncontrollably. Prince turned back around to an oxygen-deprived Juniper and a very happy-looking Alishia.

“Well then,” Juniper wiped at her whole face, “we should really be on our way. We have a package to deliver.”

“Awwww,” Alishia pouted. “Fine. Promise you’ll come see me?”

“Of course.”

“Aw, go ahead, you rogue,” Alishia smiled and large, puckery smile. “Prince, it was nice meeting you.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Prince raised one of Alishia’s tentacles and kissed it gently. Alishia blushed as Prince leaned in close and whispered something to her.

Alishia smiled hugely. “He’s so handsome, Juniper,” Alishia cooed. “Don’t go running away with him.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no danger of that.”

“That’s cold,” Prince whined and Alishia laughed, following them back to the Sylph and disconnecting the charger cables. Prince and Juniper went into the ship through the loading port and Alishia waved them on their way.

“She’s adorable,” Prince pointed out when they were seated in the pilot and co-pilot seats.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You should visit her more.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll visit her as soon as I don’t have ogres chasing me and the AI replacement of a planet’s prince as my kidnappee. Unless, of course, you’re feeling generous and want to bug off into space.”

“Today isn’t my day to die,” Prince said matter-of-factly and a little too solemnly. It sent an odd chill down Juniper’s spine.

“Yeah, well, mine neither, so lets get this stupid diamond dropped off and then we can get this whole cluster fuck sorted out.” Juniper started the engines and the glittery blue Sylph B-502 took off into the atmosphere. 

Once they were out of the atmosphere and away from the small moon’s gravitational field, Juniper typed in some coordinates and hit the autopilot button. She kicked off her shoes, ignored the smell, and propped her feet up on a part of the dashboard panel that didn’t have too many important buttons. 

“You don’t have, like, a music function or something, do you,” Juniper asked Prince.

“I don’t, but I’ve been told I have a lovely singing voice,” Prince said eagerly.

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Okay….”

Juniper closed her eyes and relaxed back into the pilot’s seat. It was pretty comfy, perhaps owing to the artificial purple fur covering on it. Juniper felt her mind wander and heard Prince start humming. She was about to throw her shoe at him, but he was right, it was nice. Juniper felt her body begin to droop. How long had it been since she’d slept…

BABONGK.

Juniper straightened up in her chair immediately, looking around. Prince sat in the chair next to her, looking at her innocently.

“What was that?”

“Ummmm.”

“Was that you?”

“Well, no.”

“Where did it come from?”

“The cargo area.”

“Bog dammit.”

Juniper pulled a knife from out of her utility belt and told Prince to back her up. Prince followed as Juniper slowly worked her way back to the cargo area, which was so small, it was more like a bin.  BA THUNK . Juniper heard another, louder sound, followed by a strange, high-pitched noise. The only thing in the cargo area was a stack of boxes and what appeared to be junk against the opposite wall. Another, smaller sound that sounded something like someone cursing very politely came out and Juniper readied her knife.

“Um, Juniper—”

“Shh.”

“But, you really don’t need the knife—”

“Sh!”

Juniper walked over to the pile of junk quietly. She reached out a hand, laying it on what appeared to be part of a broken chair. Juniper took a deep breath and pulled, sending half the pile of junk spilling across the floor of the cargo area.

“Hiiiiiiii,” someone yelled, surprisingly the hell out of Juniper.

It should be said here, that while Juniper acknowledged that life would throw an excessive amount of surprises at her, that didn’t mean that Juniper liked them. It all had to do with her sixth day of existence party at the orphanage, when the clown had not popped out of the cake and surprised the children, but instead surprised everyone by being found dead inside the cardboard cake, having overdosed on a tainted pod of moonsheen. The older children had had to help bury the body in the compost bin.

“Surprise,” Alishia bounced up and down happily.

“Alishia!”

“Juniper!”

Juniper immediately turned to Prince.

“This is your fault. I don’t know how, but I know this is your fault. What the hell is she doing here?”

“Oh, I invited her,” Prince said, obviously proud of himself.

“HOW ON JUPITER’S MOONS DID YOU EVEN THINK THAT WAS OKAY?”

Prince flinched and shriveled in on himself a little, his third eye blinking fiercely.

“I thought you’d like having her here. She seems really nice.”

“I’m right here,” Alishia pouted.

“Of course she’s nice,” Juniper took a moment to smile forcibly at Alishia, then whipped her head back to Prince “she’s nice because she’s NOT always around. She gives me my freedom. We have a thing we worked out. We  had a thing we worked out.” Juniper whipped her head back to Alishia. “Right?”

“Well, yes,” Alishia fumbled four of her thumbs together, “but Prince invited me along and you always have these grand adventures and—”

“Alishia, I haven’t changed these clothes in two weeks. I survived on Nitrogen Instacarb Noodles for two months. That’s the type of grand adventures I go on.”

“Oh…that doesn’t sound very…posh, but I’m sure I could deal with it!” Alishia piped up.

“No!” Juniper snapped. Alishia and Prince both flinched.

Juniper took a deep breath. Then took another one. “Look,” she put her hands on Alishia’s soft, blubbery shoulders and was reminded how nice they felt, “deep space with a person like me, on a ship like this isn’t good enough for you, Alishia. I have no money, I’m in a stolen ship, and I accidentally kidnapped this guy over here.”

Prince waved.

“We’re being pursued by a group of really angry ogre bodyguards, and probably the galactic police.”

“Probably the Lupine III military too,” Prince chimed in.

“Shit. Right. And the Lupine III military. There’s no way this isn’t going to be a shit storm.”

“Juniper?”

Juniper ignored Prince. “I know you’re strong enough, and you could handle it, but I  don’t want you to have to ,” Juniper said in her most charming voice she could muster.

“Juniper, you’re a peach!” Prince jogged over, hugging them both. “It’s beautiful!”

“What the hell are you talking about, I’m trying to—”

“How did you know I’ve always wanted to see a black hole?”

“A what now?”

“A black hole! Actually, I think we passed a sign a ways back that said this is a wormhole, which is even more amazing! I’ll get to see a black hole AND a white hole!”

“What the hell are you—”

Prince turned both of them forward to face the view screen of the surroundings of the ship.

“HOLY SHIT!” Juniper ran for the cockpit.

“I think you mean  black holey shit!” Prince chimed after her.

“We were supposed to be on autopilot!”

“I think it’s broken. I was looking at it earlier and the little light thing by the autopilot button wasn’t on.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me!!?”

“Look at it this way, we get to see a black hole now!”

“Juniper stared at the instruments and gauges on the dashboard. They were all going haywire and freaking out at her. This was bad. They were too close to the event horizon. “There’s no way we can get out of this,” Juniper panicked under her breath. The Sylph moaned slightly at the strong pull of the black hole slowly spinning before them.

“BOG DAMN YOU, PRINCE,” Juniper yelled as the ship was being pulled in closer and closer, the gravitational pull too strong now for them to escape out of, even if they put everything the ship had, times ten, to use.

“Have you ever been through a wormhole?” Prince asked Alishia excitedly.

“N-no, I haven’t,” Alishia tried to smile.

“Juniper’s great, isn’t she? Everything’s been such an adventure,” Prince said admiringly as the Sylph B-502 blinked once and disappeared into the wormhole.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell at me [ on Tumblr.](http://schumie.tumblr.com)


End file.
